Storm rips path through Louisa County

Mother Nature demonstrated her wrath Friday night as the leading edge of a front moved across Central Virginia and slammed into Louisa County.

Tommy and John Luck, Mineral Volunteer Fire Department members, cleared the debris from a tree that fell onto Zachary Taylor Highway during the height of the storm.

Several sections of Louisa County and the Lake Anna area were impacted as powerful winds twisted and uprooted trees, sending many into the roadways or on top of structures.

According to an e-mail sent Friday evening to career fire and EMS staff by Louisa County Fire Chief Keith Greene, the storms were capable of producing damaging winds in excess of 60 mph and quarter size hail.

Much of the state was placed under a severe thunderstorm warning and a tornado watch early in the afternoon and remained in place until later in the night, as thunder storms were expected to continue through midnight with wind gusts up to 30 mph after midnight.

At about 6 p.m., the storm intensified, lighting up telephone lines in the Louisa dispatch center as calls spewed in about structures being damaged, trees blocking highways and crashing into homes, taking down power lines in the process.

“We were eating dinner as the storm approached and assumed it was a ‘normal’ thunderstorm,’ said Mickey Wallace, who lives in the Sunning Hill subdivision at Lake Anna. “We quickly realized something else was going on when the rain began falling in sheets and the nearby houses began ‘disappearing.’ It was really loud and came really quickly.”

Wallace said the noise was equivalent to standing behind a jet engine with a super rush of wind and roaring.

To read the entire story, see the April 25 edition of The Central Virginian.

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